To the Christian who strives to follow in his Master’s footsteps, growth in spiritual light and love is assured. Journeying on this path is full of joy, renewal, redemption, spiritual discovery, and healing—what the Bible calls “the goodness of the Lord” (Psalms 27:13) at work in our lives.
Sometimes, though, as we walk down this road, we may find ourselves unexpectedly coming up against resistance to our spiritual progress. One form of resistance is persecution, which seems to strike at the heels of many sincere Christians today. But if we find ourselves confronting persecution, we can rejoice in a beautiful fact: It is powerless. It cannot actually harm its intended victim. It is doomed to fall to the ground, even as the spiritually minded follower of Christ continues to rise in consciousness to behold and understand more of God’s kingdom right at hand. Perceiving the power and presence of divine Love embracing and caring for us, we will know that God keeps us safe, because in Love’s kingdom there is nothing to harm us.
The discoverer of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy, pointed out, “The trials encountered by prophet, disciple, and apostle, ‘of whom the world was not worthy,’ await, in some form, every pioneer of truth” (Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, p. 28). Pioneers of truth are those who give their heart and soul to putting Christ’s teachings into practice, to living a life of spirituality. They are striving to prove in their lives—through a spiritual transformation of thought and character, as well as through physical healing—the supreme allness of Spirit, God, and the actual nothingness of matter. If we wish to be pioneers of truth, then as we grow in our spiritual understanding and demonstration of divine reality, we won’t be afraid of the carnal mind’s opposition. Its persecutions are aimed at the divine Truth that proves its nothingness, but they have no power to harm or marginalize us, because all real power lies with God, good. Our growing understanding and proof of spiritual truth overcomes and destroys the carnal mind’s resistance.
The carnal mind’s threats are baseless. The carnal mind is a liar, as the Bible indicates (see John 8:44); it is merely the imaginary opposite of the one divine Mind, or God. Divine Mind, which is all-powerful Love, is the only truth-teller. Our moral and spiritual courage come from the fact that the divine Mind is real, and the so-called carnal mind, or mortal mind, is unreal.
God, who is omnipotent, protects His sons and daughters from harm. As we live in accord with God’s law, the divine Science of being, we become conscious of God’s protecting power, loving embrace, and tender presence, and we realize that we are forever sheltered in the invincible fortress of God’s care. The carnal mind’s hatred of spirituality, and its attempted attacks against those who are trying to live spiritually, may seem big and scary and consequential to mortal belief, but to God they are actually nothing, because nothing exists that can interfere with or overthrow God’s majesty and dominion. The carnal mind’s hatred of spirituality becomes nothing to us as we grow to understand our true being as God’s very own image, or idea, shielded from all evil with the armor of Love.
If we find ourselves confronting persecution, we can rejoice in a beautiful fact: It is powerless.
In the Bible, when Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were thrust into the fiery furnace, they were untouched by the flames—because of their faithfulness to God and their conscious oneness with Him, who forever maintains and preserves His beloved children (see Daniel 3:1–30). The Bible is full of many other inspiring accounts which show that blessings actually come from God to one who is faithful in the face of persecution, as Christ Jesus taught in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness’ sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad: for great is your reward in heaven: for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you” (Matthew 5:10–12).
The blessing is not in the persecution itself, of course, but in the kind of spiritual living that leads us to discover more of the riches of the kingdom of heaven. The blessing lies in waking up more and more to our true spiritual identity as the reflection of God, as the pure, innocent, lovely expression of Spirit, Soul. It is in letting go of the lie, or false belief, claiming that man is material; that his identity is comprised of material DNA; that his life has a beginning and end; that matter determines his existence.
If God is infinite, is All, and if God is Spirit, then matter, Spirit’s opposite, is finite, is nothing. This is the great spiritual truth that Jesus demonstrated throughout his healing career, and that Eddy taught in Christian Science. Understanding the allness of Spirit and the nothingness of matter enables one to begin to awaken to the glory of spiritual life that is actually present right here and now, and thereby be saved from sin and disease. This is the blessing Jesus pointed to in the beatitude—the reward of the kingdom of heaven.
Understood in this light, persecution can actually be seen as a sign that we are on the right path—proving God’s supremacy in our lives, through healing. We experience such healing, though, not because of persecution, but because we are willing to continually examine our own thought to be sure we are honestly doing our best to humbly conform to the will of God and His righteousness in our hearts, and in expressing unconditional love for others. To the degree that we are striving to conform to God’s, Love’s, will, God truly is supreme to us, and we find healing. And at the same time we are totally sheltered, mentally, from any denigration or mockery of our character, because we are basking in the glow of God’s might and love for us as His precious spiritual offspring.
When I was in college, I was the only Christian Scientist on campus. And not only that, I was one of perhaps only a handful of students who had any religious faith whatsoever. The school at that time consistently ranked in a list of the top five colleges where students “ignore God.”
As a drama major, I decided in my final year to take a class in solo performance and to write and perform a short play about growing up as a Christian Scientist. The play was to chronicle how my background and upbringing had sometimes been a tremendous challenge but had ultimately proven to be the greatest gift I could imagine for my life. I had no intention of preachiness, but simply wished to share with my close-knit college community a unique, authentic, and spiritually uplifting story.
As we live in accord with God’s law, the divine Science of being, we become conscious of God’s protecting power, loving embrace, and tender presence.
About halfway through the course, after I presented a draft of my play to my classmates, one of them told me bluntly that if I performed this play, tomatoes would be thrown at me and I would be booed off the stage. Others in the class agreed. Did I really want to humiliate myself in front of all my peers? My heart sank. I had worked hard on my script, and it seemed there was nothing I could do to make it worthy of performance.
I briefly considered dropping out of the class, something I had never done in any class, ever. But even though my professor himself seemed to have some skepticism about my play, he encouraged me to keep at it.
As I prayed, I recognized that I felt deep joy, even holiness, whenever I worked on my play. This was because I was trying to communicate spiritual truths with my audience in a way that would universally resonate and inspire, rather than offend. Prayer revealed to me that the heart of this work was so much more than writing a play: It was my own growth in grace and spiritual understanding. I knew that with my pure motive to know and share more of truth, I was safe, because God is Truth, the only reality, power, and presence. In striving to fulfill this unselfish purpose, I was protected in God’s care.
A couple of stanzas from Eddy’s poem “Christ My Refuge” sum up the spiritual breakthrough I experienced:
And o’er earth’s troubled, angry sea
I see Christ walk,
And come to me, and tenderly,
Divinely talk.
Thus Truth engrounds me on the rock,
Upon Life’s shore,
’Gainst which the winds and waves can
shock,
Oh, nevermore!
(Poems, p. 12)
Those ideas gave me the confidence to keep working on my play. Over the coming weeks, I found a way forward for my script, through a number of revisions. When I eventually performed the play before a sizable portion of the college community, I received thunderous applause! For days afterward, people complimented and thanked me for my “amazing” play. I was incredibly gratified by this, though the deeper reward for me was in the realization that the kingdom of heaven includes only good, and that our increasing understanding and demonstration of this kingdom brings nothing but the truth of God’s love into our consciousness.
In this consciousness of divine Love, the world’s hatred not only is powerless to barb us, it actually can melt away.
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